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Vonnegut Being Vonnegut: 5 Lessons I Learned from Reading Armageddon in Retrospect

· books,bookstores,Vonnegut

I was a teen when I first read Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

If you’ve read it before, you’re familiar with his quirky and extremely creative work. With that book, he finally achieved the attention his writing deserved. In subsequent years, I read Breakfast of Champions & various other short stories.

Recently, I stumbled on Armageddon in Retrospect during one of my Rocio' Book Adventure. It didn’t take me long to consume the book in one go.

5 THINGS I LEARNED

1. MARK VONNEGUT. He has a son who’s also a talented writer as well as an accomplished pediatrician & painter (The Eden Express is on my list).

 

2. SPORTS WRITER. Early in his career, Sports Illustrated tasked him with reporting on a racehorse jumping over a fence & trying to run away, he stared at the paper for a long time & finally wrote, “The horse jumped over the f$%*ing fence," and he ‘walked out, self-employed again.’

 

3. SEMICOLONS. His advice for writers starting out: “Don’t use semicolons!...They represent nothing. All they do is suggest you might have gone to college.”

 

4. POW. He was a POW during WII & was in Dresden, Germany during the infamous bombings.

 

5. VONNEGUT BEING VONNEGUT. He was once asked: "Can't you ever be serious?"... 'No.'" What's your favorite Vonnegut book?

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